Rebecca Skloot is coming back to Portland Community College, where the seed that grew into her book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" was planted.

Skloot grew up in Portland and was a headstrong kid who spent a difficult year at Lincoln High School before finding herself at the Metropolitan Learning Center, an alternative high school in Northwest Portland. When she was 16, she took a biology class at Portland Community College for high school credit and the teacher, Donald Defler, mentioned that the cells from one woman, Henrietta Lacks, have been vital in medical research. Skloot wanted to know who Lacks was and Defler suggested she write a paper for extra credit.

More than 20 years later, that paper is a book that won two major prizes and has been on The New York Times paperback best-seller list for 60 weeks. Skloot has been winding down her schedule of touring and speaking engagements but was eager to return to PCC. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is this year's PCC Reads selection, in which students, faculty and staff read and discuss the book at different events.

Skloot answered a few questions by email:

You've done dozens and dozens of school events and classroom visits in the past two years. How is going to PCC different?

It's different in a lot of ways, actually. It's a real homecoming, since I first learned about HeLa cells when I was 16 and sitting in a basic biology class at PCC, so I wanted these events to be special, and PCC has been great about getting creative with me on it: For the first one I'll talk about my unconventional educational and career paths, and the lessons students can take from them: I took unexpected turns and ended up with a life that combined the arts and sciences in surprising ways.

The story is valuable for students to hear, because it illustrates the importance of following your curiosity and passion through life, and how a single sentence in a classroom can change a person's life forever if you're open to it.

For the second event, rather than standing on stage giving a standard lecture, I'll be doing an onstage discussion with groups of PCC students focusing on topics they've chosen related to the book, including bioethics, race and social justice, and professional writing. That's followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing.

The story of how you first heard about HeLa cells in a PCC science class is by now well known. What's the reaction when you tell it?

Surprise mostly, because it isn't the story people expect. When people hear that I learned about HeLa cells at 16, then wrote a book about it decades later, they usually assume I was a straight-A student who always knew I wanted to be a writer.

But I was terrible student for much of my youth. It wasn't that I couldn't do the work. I just didn't fit in the traditional school system. Fortunately, my parents recognized that I wasn't just a troublemaker; I was a smart kid with a lot of energy who was bored and not being challenged to use that energy in a productive way.

After failing my first year of high school, I transferred to Metropolitan Learning Center (MLC), an alternative public school in Northwest Portland, which completely changed my life. MLC let students pace themselves and create their own curriculums; as part of that, they let students take classes at PCC for high school credit. That's how I ended up in Mr. Defler's biology class when I was 16. I didn't suddenly realize I wanted to be a writer the moment he mentioned HeLa cells in that class -- it took more than a decade for that to happen -- but the independence and curiosity that moment inspired drove me to learn, and got me excited about school for the first time.

The responses I get to this story are pretty amazing for me to hear: students struggling to find their paths use the word "inspiring," while parents and teachers use the word "relief" a lot, which I love. They say it's always good to be reminded that the very personality traits that can make a child difficult can be positive and productive if channeled properly. Which was certainly the case with me.

One of the most common questions I get about my book is, "Why didn't you give up? What made you keep going for more than a decade in the face of so many roadblocks?" The answer is, I'm hardheaded, determined ... My parents have said many times, "The side of you that didn't give up on this book was such a pain when you were a kid."

You had a short attention span back then. What if you were daydreaming or looking out the window at that moment?

Deborah Lacks believed her mother was brought back to life as an angel in the form of HeLa cells to cure diseases and take care of people, that her soul lives on in those cells. Deborah eventually came to believe that Henrietta had chosen me to tell her story, that she'd essentially been working me as a puppet much of my life, making sure I learned about her cells, studied science, then writing. So in response to your question, Deborah would say that if I'd been spacing out that moment in class, Henrietta would have gotten my attention some other way. But she also would have said there's no way Henrietta would have let me miss that moment when it happened, because she'd orchestrated it herself.

You were not a conventionally successful high school student who went straight to a four-year college. How did that affect the writer you became?

It taught me the importance of following your curiosity and your gut wherever they might lead you, even (or especially) if they're trying to take you somewhere that's completely different from where you imagined yourself ending up.

People say an author should never write a book they don't want to talk about for the rest of their lives. Is that true, based on your experience, and are you ready to move on to something else?

Absolutely. I always say that to write a book, you have to be so obsessed with your subject that you can't not write it. You have to be prepared to live with it day and night for years as you write, then once it's published, if you're lucky, you're going to have to talk about it for the rest of your life. I feel very fortunate that so many people want to hear me speak about the book, which is what I've been doing pretty much nonstop for more than two years since it came out. I'm also still working on it in some ways -- I'm adapting it for middle grade readers, and working on the film adaptation for HBO -- but yes, I'm very excited to move on to my next book project, (about the human-animal bond).